| There are ongoing controversies on Bangladesh's connecting to Asian highway, thus giving transit facilities to India, which according to political opponents of the ruling party, would put the sovreignty and national security of the nation in jeopardy, while the government continues to claim that, any such connections will only bring tremendous benefit for the entire nation. There is no doubt that, most of the opponents to Asian Highway are yet to know exactly what the project is. Let us first try to learn what is Asian Highway. According to Wikipedia, The Asian Highway [AH] project, also known as the Great Asian Highway, is a cooperative project among countries in Asia and Europe and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific [ESCAP], to improve the highway systems in Asia. It is one of the three pillars of Asian Land Transport Infrastructure Development [ALTID] project, endorsed by the ESCAP commission at its forty-eighth session in 1992, comprising Asian Highway, Trans-Asian Railway [TAR] and facilitation of land transport projects. Agreements have been signed by 32 countries to allow the highway to cross the continent and also reach to Europe. Some of the countries taking part in the highway project are India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, China, Japan, South Korea and Bangladesh. A significant part of the funding comes from the larger, more advanced nations as well as international agencies such as the Asian Development Bank. The project is scheduled for completion in 2010. The project aims to make maximum use of the continent's existing highways to avoid the construction of newer ones, except in cases where missing routes necessitate their construction. Project Monitor, an Asian infrastructure news website, has commented that the: "early beneficiaries of the Asian Highway project are the planners within the national land transport department of the participating countries [since] it assists them in planning the most cost-effective and efficient routes to promote domestic and international trade. Non-coastal areas.... are the other beneficiaries." However, in the mid-2000s some transportation experts were sceptical about the viability of the project given the economic and political climate in both South and South-East Asia. The AH project was initiated by the United Nations in 1959 with the aim of promoting the development of international road transport in the region. During the first phase of the project [1960-1970] considerable progress was achieved, however, progress slowed down when financial assistance was suspended in 1975. ESCAP has conducted several projects in cooperation with AH member countries step by step after the endorsement of ALTID in 1992. The Intergovernmental Agreement on the Asian Highway Network [IGA] was adopted on November 18, 2003, by the Intergovernmental Meeting; the IGA includes Annex I, which identifies 55 AH routes among 32 member countries totalling approximately 87,500 miles [140,000 km], and Annex II "Classification and Design Standards". During the 60th session of the ESCAP Commission at Shanghai, China, in April 2004, the IGA treaty was signed by 23 countries. By 2007, 28 countries were signatories, which subsequently rose to 32 countries in 2008. India is hopeful that the mega project will continue to bring it and Pakistan closer, as a furtherance of the earlier resumption of bus and train services between the two countries after decades of hostilities. The advanced highway network would provide for greater trade and social interactions between Asian countries, including personal contacts, project capitalizations, connections of major container terminals with transportation points, and promotion of tourism via the new roadways. However rights groups in Southeast Asia monitoring the North-South Corridor segment were concerned with the remote area's rapid development resulting in significant increases to exposure of HIV/AIDS, human trafficking and the possible exploitation of the surrounding forests and wildlife resources. According to Om Prakash, an advisor with in New Delhi: "It's an excellent step taken by ESCAP to gather all the Asian countries under one crown but the problem with this project is political disputes between some countries, notably Pakistan and Myanmar, which is delaying the project". India views the project favourably since it would increase trade with its neighbours, especially Pakistan and Myanmar.Sanjoy Hazarika of the Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research commented: "The [2003] agreement between Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand needs to be considered by India as an international link for trade, while retaining the presently designated AH route through Tambli, Bangladesh, and Imphal, India." As well, he also stated: "Given its extensive geographical coverage and the recent move to integrate it with other means of transportation, the Asian Highway project requires collective effort and close collaboration among the Asian countries. Why anti-Indian group of Bangladeshis are continuing to say while opposing to according transit facilities to India under Asian highway scheme: 1. If allowed transit within the country, once given, Bangladesh will not be in a position to take it back. India is increasingly becoming powerful. It will kill Bangladeshis with the excuse of being terrorists or drug -dealers. 2. India is building war fleets and torpados to keep its growing power from Africa upto Australia in the Indian ocean. Without the transit, its existance is threatned but with transt, like Pakistan it will be a breeding ground for anti-Indian fundamen talism. 3. Without the transit, the seven non Indian sisters that now depend on Bangladesh for manufactured goods,, but with transit, India will sell its own product to the region and Bangladesh will lose. 4. India doesn't want to allow Bangladesh to have land route with Nepal and Bhutan purely for trade purpose, India shows the excuse that it goes against its territorial integrity, how using the same logic Bangladesh can allow transit? 5. Why Bangladesh should risk destroying its own roads and highways will be neglected by the chauvanistic Indian traders and military personnels passing through this? 6. India failed to keep upto the signed treaties of Barubari / Farakka. If it [India] first fixes these long-standing issues than only thust building will lead to transit. 7. It will allow India to increase its repression over the occupied North East. Bangladesh suffered in the hand of Pakistan and as a peace-loving country it will not allow India to increase its repression over its non Hindi/ largely Asian/ Christian and Buddhist minority people unfortunately made part of India. Bangladesh officials said India on August 20, 2007 handed over to Dhaka a draft deal on transit for five years, agreement on regulations of passenger and cargo vehicular traffic between the two countries, for signing. In the draft, New Delhi proposed allowing Indian vehicles with goods and container cargos to enter the Bangladesh territory through the Benapole land port and again enter the Indian states of Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram through Bangladesh boarder points of Tamabil, Bibirbazar and Khagrachari. Officials in Dhaka, however, observed despite mounting pressure from New Delhi, Bangladesh cannot afford to allow India any transit for certain factors such as lack of infrastructure and logistics, absence of in-depth assessment of possible gains from such 'economic issue' and implication on internal security. Foreign affairs and communications ministries officials on Sunday told New Age New Delhi had already made a number of proposals to Dhaka to allow its goods transit through Bangladesh on land and waterway. The Bangladeshi foreign affairs ministry before the inter-ministerial meeting on July 10, 2009 took the consent of the ministries of shipping and communications on providing transit to India. The foreign secretary, Touhid Hossain, presided over the meeting which discussed various issues to be discussed at the Indo-Bangla foreign secretary talks and Bangladesh's preparation in this direction. As for India's latest proposal, a high government official, earlier involved with the process, said in the latest proposal, New Delhi tacitly avoided using the word 'transit,' considering political sensitivity on the issue in Bangladesh. 'Whatever the wording may be, the draft means to allow transit for India,' the official said. Foreign ministry officials also felt apart from the above agreement, India might take up the issue of setting up a new port call at Ashuganj in Brahmanbaria, bus link between Agartala and Kokata via Dhaka and goods train service between Akhaura and Agartala. 'As for the three Indian proposals, we need to asses the benefits from such propositions and get the final government nod to sign agreements with India,' said another official. Foreign ministry officials said Dhaka would emphasise issues such as increased trade cooperation to reduce trade gap, a schedule for the Joint Rivers Commission meeting of the ministerial level and resumption of the delimitation of maritime boundary talks that was stalled more than two decades ago, at the two-day meeting of the foreign secretaries. What is in the transit facilities that India wants: The transit for a country is mainly access through a country to the third one. For example, India has a transit to Afghanistan through Iran. So, Indian goods can board from Iranian ports and go through to Afghanistan. However, due to geographical complexity, in this case, the transit refers to connectivity between North-East Indian seven states with mainland India, especially West Bengal. The goods carried from North East, comes to mainland India through a strip of Assam and North Bengal, taking a route miles longer than what could have been a shortest through Bangladesh. Bangladesh govt. never allowed India to have a transit in return of a hefty transit fee offerred by India. The transit, that could have been a win-win situation, has been refused as a threat to National security. The other point of interest here could be the transhipment. Here, Transit refers to the passage across Bangladesh territory of Indian goods to and from the north Eastern states of India using Indian owned surface transport, while transhipment refers to the same movement using Bangladesh-owned transport. The transit was used by India till 1965 war, since then it got stopped. The war was between India and Pakistan. In the mean time, Pakistan broke, Bangladesh was born, but situation remained unchanged. Though after independence, Bangladesh allowed India the transit in air-routes and river, the major issue of road-transit is still not tackled. The river-transit is almost abandoned for being incompetitive, the mutual air-transit is still in use. The main gainer of this whole process would be the people of North-East of India. Right now, anything produced in that region can not be marketed in the rest of India, due to the distance from port [Kolkata]. From past decade, India is becoming more dependent on foreign and private investments in growth picture. But, no company will want to invest in this remote corner of the Northeast, because of the logistical problems of Sevens Sisters linking in with the rest of India. So the only real economic future of Northeast lies in reopening its route through Bangladesh to its West and with Myanmar and South-East Asia to the East. For additional benefit, if they are allowed to use a Bangladesh port, the export oriented business can also come up in this region. The region is rich in energy resources, like natural gas and hydro-electricity. The economic progress in this region can stop a long-standing grievence and insurgency resulted. How Bangladesh can benefit from the transit: The gain of Bangladesh can be manyfolds. 1. How Bangladesh can become a regional transport hub, was described by ADB Country Director Hua Du in a seminar recently. She mentioned – "You can benefit tremendously through opening up transit and great opportunities for crossing from east to west and giving the land-locked neighbours access to the sea".The Chittagong port can become a modern busy port like Singapore serving the SAARC countries and even China. Huge foreign investment may be attracted to Bangladesh and finally a throbbing service sector like banks, insurance, hotels, rest houses, petrol pumps etc. may develop around the Trans continental roads and railways. 2. There is an estimate of direct economic gain from transit fees. It ranges from 500 crore taka to 4,666 crore taka. 3. The last but not the least, is the mutual transit. Bangladesh, in return, will get a much shorter route to China, which already is its second largest trading partner. Unfortunately, most of the trading nowadays takes place through sea-route. The cost of import increases, as well as Bangladeshi goods loose competitiveness in Chinese market. If Bangladesh wants to access South Chinese underdeveloped market, they must go through India. This was a point of concern for the Chinese delegates during Kunming initiative in 1999, an initiative to link Chinese province of Yunan with Seven Sisters of India, Myanmar, Thailand and Bangladesh. It is time for Bangladeshi experts to sit with the pros and cons of the transit issue by forgetting their mere political motivations to oppose India. The issue, if profitable for the economy of Bangladesh, should surely be considered with due importance. |
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